Today I upgraded from Design Standard CS5.0 to CS6, and as I am running Windows 7 64bit I chose the 64-bit version of Illustrator.

Now every time I start Illustrator it reports "Error loading plugins. Drop Shadow.aip"; after clicking OK it starts normally, but obviously without the Drop Shadow plug-in.

Then, I open a new document, draw a rectangle and select Effect/Stylize/Glowing Edges; the first time in a session I do that, Illustrator produces a pop-up saying "The operation cannot complete because of an unknown error. [CANT]", but on OK shows the Glowing Edges work area without problems. After finishing the Glowing Edges effect, I can then select it in that session without getting the pop-up. As Drop Shadow is in the Stylize category of Illustrator CS5 I suppose the pop-up is a side effect of the failure to load Drop Shadow.aip.

Sounds like you need a specific runtime library. Could be anything from MSVC8 through 10 or one of the .NET runtimes. The Gaussian Blur and all derived effects (Glow, Drop Shadow) have been rewritten and may use one of those functions. Download the files from Microsoft, install them step by step and see, if it fixes the issue.

It is somewhat annoying that, apparently, the installation program fails to check for the presence of all runtime libraries needed by Illustrator. That would seem to be one of the basic tasks of such a program.

Did you have any luck finding the dependency needed? I am in the same boat. CS5.5 worked fine, but just upgraded and illustrator CS6 gives me the error about dropshadow.aip upon startup. I tried a lot of .net and MSVC packages both x32 and x64 to no avail.

Sorry, I decided not to spend a lot of time doing Adobe's work to get a tool working that I won't even need in the foreseeable future, so when Illustrator starts I take the easy way out: click OK and use Illustrator without further problems.

How do we get Adobe to respond here? I had a clean install of Windows 7 64-bit. Then a clean install of Adobe Illustrator. This problem still occurs.

I'm confused and disullusioned that for a problem like this there is not even a suggested set of steps to resolve. If there are libraries that need to be installed, I'd like to know which ones, where to get them, etc.

I have the same error on starup, its a bit annoying and I'd like to use the drop shadow.

The drag and drop from folder to AI doesn't work properly either: "The operation cannot complete of an unknown error. [CANT]

Drag and drop or Place of PSD-file doesn't do anything.

I've used Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and Premiere so far from Master Collection and all of them have been giving errors. I sucks to pay load of money and get half working software in return.

Then, I open a new document, draw a rectangle and select Effect/Stylize/Glowing Edges; the first time in a session I do that, Illustrator produces a pop-up saying "The operation cannot complete because of an unknown error. [CANT]",

While this work-around may be helpful for those who urgently need the plug-in, the real problem has not been dealt with, that is, the problem that a plug-in installed as part of an expensive piece of software does not work correctly out of the box. As to the pop-up work-around, disabling UAC to make up for a programmer's error/oversight is a no-go area for me.

I'll continue to click away the annoying message until I really need drop shadow or the error has been corrected in an Illustrator update.

I had not tried what bluegold316 described (no need for drop shadow), so I don't know if it would have worked for me. Strange that the alternative you found does work (not updated yet? or a very different piece of code?).

Thanks to all who contributed here. It is disappointing that such a large company is refusing to address a problem with $1000+ software. I'm appauled.

Thanks for the suggestion above to move the filter files out, start, them move them back. Unfortunatly, it did not work for me. It is reassuring to know that others have this problem--it's not something wonky about my system.

I did an uninstall, ran the cleaner, and reinstalled, as suggested by Adobe staff. Unfortunatly, that did not help either. They were just giving me a pat answer, not really looking at my problem.

I'm sorry to see that Adobe is not addressing this issue. If anything arises, please share it here I'll keep active alters on this thread.

I finally called Adobe. Support was helpful. This is not complete instructions, just what they had me do (and it worked). I am CS6 on Windows 7 x64.

Start from fresh reboot--they made me do that, can't hurt.

They had me go into <drive>:\Users\<myaccount>\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS6 Settings

They had me delete en_US folder. (Well, drag it to desktop, same thing.)

Then checked for the \Users\<myaccount>\AppData\Local\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS6 Settings directory, but in my case it did not exist, so no action. Probably if it had existed they would have had me delete as I did with the one under Roaming.

Then run Illustrator, the problem was gone, no errors, open files using the drop shadow and no errors, create new file no errors, everything fine.

we ran into the same problem with Illustrator CS6 (and Bridge CS6 crashing immediately after launch) and sadly none of the above tipps could solve the problem. Here's how I solved the problem ...

The problem seems to be related to W7-UAC and permissions (at least here). Like many other in the GFX-biz i use a fast stripe-set to carry the TEMP- and TMP-folders. The environment variables therefore pointet to "TEMP => s:\temp" and "TMP => s:\tmp".

This seems to confuse the good ppl at Adobe or Microsoft.

FIX:

a) Make sure your user-environment variables "TEMP" and "TMP" point to the default, as set up by Windows upon installation: this can be either

"c:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Temp" (which didn't exist here)

or

"c:\Windows\Temp"

(where "c:" indicates your system drive)

b) If your TEMP/TMP vars point to non-standard paths, and if you are unsure, make User and System-environment vars point to "TEMP => c:\windows\temp" and "TMP => c:\windows\tmp"

Question:

How to still use your fast stripe-set or SSD for temp-folder?

Just create "junctions" within the Windows-folder. Junctions are special links that point to different locations. To create junctions, do the following (but DO TAKE CARE, tipps are provided as is, whatever you do, you are responsible for it

a) open an Explorer-window as Administrator (right click and select "run as Administrator"), go to your Windows-directory and delete the "temp"-folder (and the "tmp"-folder too if there is one)

b) make sure the temp-folders on your fast drive/partition are created already

c) open a command-window as Administrator (right click and select "run as Administrator") and type the following commands (just enter bold stuff):

%SYSTEMDRIVE% (press enter)

this brings you to the drive where Windows is installed on

cd %WINDIR% (press enter)

this brings you to the Windows-directory

Once in the Windows directory, type ... "mklink /j temp [path to your temp folder]" so in case your fast stripe-set is drive "s" and the tempo-folder therin is called "temp" you type ...

mklink /j temp s:\temp

d) do the same for "tmp"

mklink /j tmp s:\tmp

Here's the setup that fixed it here ...

System and User-TEMP-variable points to "c:\windows\temp"

System and User-TMP-variable points to "c:\windows\tmp"

"c:\windows\temp" is a junction to "s:\temp"

"c:\windows\tmp" is a junction to "s:\tmp"

Additional bonus:

The above procedure also fixed the crashes in Bridge CS that occured as soon as the program launched.

Thank you!!! I've been trying to fix this for days and finally I got it working. When I did a fresh install of illustrator CS6 on my windows 7 home premium i got an error saying about 15 different plugins hadn't loaded and when it loaded up half the UI was missing. But after doing as you said and deleting the settings folder it worked perfect!

on the window that pops up choose the -> security tab and then select the "Users" on the upperbox

after that choose to edit (click on the edit button right below that box) the permissions for that file and allow full control for the users group (did so to other filters as well... just to be sure) - from there everything worked well

Thanks worked for almost all of my problems (already had SSD and yes, I changed default win variables). I made an mklink shurtcut, reset to that shortcut and working fine EXCEPT ILLUSTRATOR 64bit drop shadow

Worked for me also. Episodes like this make me really appreciate forums where you can usually find answers to problems Adobe won't bother to deal with. I no longer get the drop shadow.aip error message after following the suggestion. It think it is indeed an answered question.